Celebrity success à la 16th century – I only knew of Sidney as a poet and courtier but wasn’t aware of his star appeal on the international aristocratic circuit, appropriately conveyed as a glittering comet trail.

‘Sir Philip Sidney’s brief passage across the sixteenth century  glowed like the track of a comet: he seemed unable to travel in a foreign country without being offered the crown or the hand of the sovereign’s daughter.’

Source: Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts: On foot to Constantinople: from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (London: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 257

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